Why Dave Meltzer Is RIGHT About Kenny Omega
Devil's sky in the detail.
In a recent statement that annoyed the same people such statements typically annoy, the Wrestling Observer's Dave Meltzer wrote the following on the F4W boards:
"Nobody in history has ever put more thought and more layers of storytelling in a match than Kenny Omega. It's ridiculous. That's why when you watch his matches over and over you see more each time. That's what makes him so great."
He was right.
Kenny Omega - and since the title will inflame certain people irrespective of the content, one might as well go all in - is almost too intelligent for the American television wrestling audience. That is a confrontational stance, but too many people insist that he has failed to transition to the new medium. In some ways, perhaps he has. A more accurate way of putting it might be that the medium itself needs to adjust to a performer of Omega's ambition.
Consider his match with Trent on the April 1, 2020 Dynamite. It didn't need to be anything other than a great opening match. With so much AEW talent locked down, it was promoted tacitly as just that; outside of the TNT Title tournament that was booked tremendously, under high-pressure circumstances, there was little scope nor time to tell a traditional TV story. This, as framed by the opening handshake, was a tale of two babyfaces, with no preexisting tension, working a competitive contest in the trenches because the context demanded it. There was nothing else to do but wrestle in front of their peers to determine who the best man was on the night.
But it also wasn't.
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